ACROSS COUNTRY

I must fare on from winter and rough weatherAnd the dark tempests chained within Time’s womb.Southwards I go. Each footstep marks the tombOf a dead pleasure. Melun, Fontainebleau,–How shall I name them with the ghosts that roamIn their deserted streets of long ago?I will not stop to weep. Before me lieLands larger in their purpose,…

“You think me a mad woman and unkind,But that is nonsense. I am sound of headAnd not unsound of heart, ah, no, not there!But you turn my head with your John the Baptist’s face.I will not be made jealous, so beware.”She looked entreatingly as if for grace,And held me by the arm. “We are strangers…

No creed of mockery to make men smile,No boast of wisdom travestied as wit;Only a clean soul where the infiniteCalm of the heavens, as on some tropic isle,Should have looked down and on the face of it,Inscribed in sunlight, “Nothing here was vile.”–Thus to my life I argue it to–day,Thus chide my heart its too…

We both have earned, even more than rest, from toil;Our minds need laughter, as a spent lamp oil,And after their long fast a recompense.How sweet the evening is with its fresh scentsOf briar and fern distilled by the warm wind!How green a robe the rain has left behind!How the birds laugh!–What say you to a…

And he lay there as they left him when he came from the CorridaIn his gold embroidered jacket and his red cloak and his pride.But at cockcrow in the morning, when the convents of SevillaSuddenly rang loud to matins, Sanchez wakened with a cry,And he called to Mariquita, bade her summon his cuadrilla,That they all…

Swings, roundabouts, and shows, the Champions Seven,Dramas of battles and the deaths of kings,The whole Place d’Armes grown white as if with snow,With canvas booths arrayed in triple lines,And jugglers, lions, snakes from Mexico,Dancers on tight ropes, clowns and columbines.I went among them all with grave intent,I, too, to find it may be some delight.I…